with Reroll & Ignore Injury

Archive for March, 2011

Ok. So I have like 3 Stormravens waiting to be painted. Problem is, in what colours?

I’ve had the physical Grey Knights Codex for a week (yes, I know it’s before the official launch), and there are things I want to try out. One of them is the Stormraven. It’s actually slightly different from the Blood Angels version:-

1. It costs 5 points more.
2. It has Fortitude, a psychic power that allows it to ignore shaken and stun damage results.
3. Instead of Bloodstrike Missiles, it has Mindstrike Missiles, which are Range 72′, Str 4 AP5 Heavy 1, Blast, One Shot missiles that cause Psi-shock (Psykers hit also suffer Perils of the Warp).

Not bad. But is it possible for me to paint one in such a way that it could be passed off as either Grey Knights or Blood Angels? How would such a colour scheme look? Because if it can be done nicely, I’ll paint the rest of the Grey Knights army in the same scheme. Yeah, I already have the new plastics: 2 boxes of GK Terminators, 1 box power armour GK and the Dread Knight. Sigh. So much unpainted stuff and I’m STILL buying?

I’ve liked the metal Grey Knight Terminators for some time, and have wanted to do a super elite (read: low model count, since I also paint ‘super’ slow) army of them for some time. This was further cemented with the Stormraven being rumoured to be available for both Grey Knights and my bread-&-butter Blood Angels. I could paint up Ravens in ambigous Grey Knight or Blood Angels colours with detach-able iconography and use them for both armies!

And so I looked through the upcoming Grey Knights codex rumours on the net for the past months with great interest. With many of us having seen a preview copy of the new codex by now, here are my personal thoughts on the army rules:-

This army is very very VERY good against marines. Every grey knight and his pet servo skull has a force weapon that ignores armour saves. All the psycannons are higher strength, faster-firing AND rending now too, and they are EVERYWHERE in this army. Many squads, not just Purgation squads, can have like 4 Psycannons firing 16 S7 rending shots per round. Their stormbolters can be made strength 5 too. I think GKs have a distinct advantage against every 3+ save army out there, which on top of not really benefitting from their high armour saves against GK, are also limited in number like GK.

Grey Knights are good against most OTHER armies as well. Hordes are still manageable in close combat because of nifty things like Cleansing Flame that basically allow Purifier squads to wipe half of ALL enemies in assault BEFORE anyone gets to strike (since most hordes have bad saves). Blobs of 50 guardsmen or 30-boy ork squads? No problemo. 1 squad will take care of them in 2 assault rounds, statistically speaking.

The handicap of no dedicated transports for their Troops has been taken care of. Grey Knights now have jump infantry, Stormravens for fast redeployment and also teleport capabilities, including a last minute shunt up to 30 inches to grab objectives built into certain infantry types (no transport needed). So they are, on top of all other buffs, FAST now, as compared to the old codex.

Their Grandmasters can grant D3 squads ‘scoring’, ‘counter-attack’ USR, ‘scout’, or re-roll all 1s to wounds for basically no extra cost, as far as I can tell (compared with C:SM).

Yes, Grey Knights are a force to reckoned with, if played right. Ther small numbers only belie their considerable advantage against most other armies. In my humble opinion, at least.

All right then, with that out of the way, lets move on to… My beef with the new codex. The way the rules are writ makes no sense vis-a-vis the fluff. Here’s why I think so: There is an overall improvement in army prowess versus every army out there… EXCEPT THE ONE IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE FIGHTING AGAINST. So why are all these ‘improvements’ put in? They are only really good against NON-DEMONS!!!!!!!!

Let’s quickly go through the game-changing uber things they’ve put in – Force Weapons. These ignore armour saves, which make them very gawdem good against marines (who are supposed to be their allies), BUT NO BLOODY GOOD against Demons who have INVULNERABLE SAVES!!!! In fact they’ve REMOVED all the GK’s abilities to ignore Invulnerable Saves, present in the old codex. OK. the Vindicare Assassin has Shield Breaker. But he’s not a Knight, and he’s one guy who can shoot ONE model a turn. He’s going do nuts against an ENTIRE army of invulnerable saves!

Psyker powers up the wazzoo. Yeah, big help that would be against IMMUNE Khorne units. Force Weapon instant death don’t work either, thank you very much.

Greater speed. Hmm, don’t demons move and assault immediately after deep strike, thereby tying up your GKs? So the vaunted Knights don’t even get to shoot before being dealt hellblade death? Oh, Strike Squads have Warp Quake? So what, Demons can’t appear just outside range, and THEN assault to own your ass? And oh, some demons are IMMUNE. Besides, if you play ONLY with Strike Squads, you’re asking to have your ass handed to you.

All that Rending shooting. Er, demons have invulnerable saves, not armour saves. And they DON’T HAVE ANY TRANSPORTS to be shot down.

My dissatisfaction is not that Demons can be made extremely effective against Grey Knights if you put your mind to it, after all, Demons are probably the weakest army out there, but that the Grey Knights codex changes have made them good against all OTHER armies they’re NOT supposed to be fighting but are NOT EFFECTIVE against the army that they ARE supposed to be fighting. It makes no sense. It seems that GW just wanted to make GKs exciting for selling stuff (by making them scary to the most prevalent army out there – marines!) than making GK improvements make sense.